With Chicago, New York, and Boston buried, they are trying the best they can to get the city out from under the thick blanket of snow, this well known satirical image of Al Gore using a flamethrower comes to mind:
Liv writes in the MIT alumni forum that truth is often stranger than fiction, because Boston city government did in fact propose using flamethrowers to remove snow.
Sixty three years ago Boston received so much snow that then Mayor James Curley took a look at it and began pleading with then MIT President Dr. Karl Compton for help. “I am very desirous that [MIT] have a competent group of engineers make an immediate study as to ways and means of removing the huge accumulation,” he wrote, “…be it by the use of flame throwers or chemicals or otherwise.” The mayor was desperate.
Sound familiar? Current Mayor Thomas Menino was quoted yesterday exclaiming, “This is relentless; it just doesn’t stop coming.” Indeed, Boston has already received more than 60 inches of snow this winter, some 20 more than the seasonal average, and more is on the way. Federal law prevents the city from dumping snow into the Charles River (too many contaminants), so the city is charged with finding ever more places to pile ever higher mountains of snow.
An article over the weekend in the New York Times pointed out that other cities, like Minneapolis, have dealt with this problem by investing in snow dragons, which are pricey machines capable of melting, filtering, and safely disposing of 30 tons of snow per hour. According to the Times piece, Boston has rebuffed the idea in the past but is reconsidering. Public Works Commissioner Joanne Massaro says that “any option is on the table.”
Any option, including reaching out to MIT?
“No,” says MIT Facilities Director John DiFava, “We haven’t heard from the Mayor’s office.” It’s probably for the best, since the crews are already busy. In the last few weeks, they have been working around the clock to deal with the record snow.
“At this point, it’s not necessarily the clearing it away, it’s the getting rid of it,” says DiFava. “When the snow first starts to come you plow it out of the way, but as it builds and doesn’t melt you start to lose space. It starts to fill in and the streets get smaller and the walkways get smaller, and then you’re faced with trucking it out.”
DiFava says MIT crews are piling snow in a campus recycling lot and several other lots in the northwest part of campus.
“We’re lucky to have property on campus where we can pile it,” he says, “but if this keeps up, they’ll close too. Then, I don’t know what.”
Time to dig out those flamethrowers?
h/t to Alek O. Komarnitsky
I’m seriously thinking about finding some sort of pavement heating system to install under my driveway when I get it repaved next year. With our electrical coming from our friendly neighborhood nuclear plant it wouldn’t be to awfully expensive to flip a switch at night before bed and have a clear driveway in the morning, right?
Flame throwers? lol. They might as well pee on it.
And the carbon footprint for flamethrowing (including committee meetings to study the matter and print reports) would be how big?
Eventually Mother Nature wins. Always.
Very ironic that some people don’t want the polar ice to melt but when it snows to ice in their own back yard they’re ready to go all mental with the funky flame throwers.
But of course I like the pro-active idea though, to melt the snow slowly so as it don’t melt all at once and create such a nasty flood that happens about the same time every year. Nah, better then to melt the snow when it’s still freezing cold, err, or, well, at least if one is into ice skating. I wonder are they into big mann sized yellow balloons too? :p
“Federal law prevents the city from dumping snow into the Charles River (too many contaminants)”
What!!! – Isn’t it going to end up there anyway when it melts? Does Federal law ban rain from falling in the river, or is that not contaminated?? Goodness knows what they would do if an engine-less Airbus dropped in…..
I’m glad that you have that catastrophic gobal warming there, because we had it in november and december. Now we have plesant mild winter here in Finland. Be patient, that snow melts away before summer 😆
LOL! That reminds me of Dave Barry’s Garden flame weeder!
Now that sounds like a fun job. I would love to do that. /no sark
wouldn’t it be great if it backfired!
The french are selling a thermal snowbuster here.
By the way, Yesterday I posted that letter on tips and notes. I didn’t know that it was already on WUWT radar.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/tips-notes-to-wuwt/#comment-589389
Until they invented these computer games…
..no one would have believed that heat could hide so well
Someone tell me again where all that heat is hiding..
All that warm that makes it cold and snow….
(temp map of Arctic)
http://stevengoddard.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/sfctmp_01-fnl.gif
Ever had a camp fire on a snowy night? One of the crazy things about snow is that fire does a very poor job of melting it, at least out in the open (ovens do fine).
I saw my first snow dragon last night. One of the very few entrances to my neighborhood was blocked off by a huge mountain of snow; nearby there was a strange big yellow steaming box with a funnel out the bottom pointing into a sewer and bucket loaders were shoveling snow into it. And here today, you’re telling me what it is. Isn’t the internet wonderful?
Watts the fixation with seeing the asphalt? Would you beleave there are cities in our world that run compactors over the road snow ? Mother nature in time will do her thing and it will melt, the only problem is that in America is that 40% of the nuts behind the wheel have a left hand thread ! And the other 60% try to get through winter on summer tyres.
Perhaps there is a use for these otherwise ridiculous windmills. Its not urgent to melt the snow on a given day so you could wait for a windy day to use the power to melt snow. One two megawatt windmill running at 18% rated power on average should be able to melt 650 metric tons of ice per week.
Of course a 24 inch snow storm drops enough snow so that this would only melt the snow from less than 2 km of a two lane road. Need lots of windmills.
This is just another in a long list of examples of how we have let so-called “environmental regulation” become the tail that wags the dog, to the detriment of us all. Minneapolis has to buy “pricey” machines called “snow dragons” to deal with a problem we used to just deal with by letting the stuff melt into various rivers and creeks, slowly and naturally. Because of so-called “contaminants.” It is another example of absurdity. If Balzac were alive today, he would have an excellent sequel to his novel “The Human Comedy.”
jajajajajajajajajaajajajajaajajajajajaajaja
poor Al
All kidding aside, I think it’s a fine letter. I’m hoping everyone is taking note that this letter is from 1948 – long before any climate change scare. He’s seeking help from the brightest people he knows of. The “flame thrower” comment is nothing more than a chance to let them know that no idea is out of bounds. His desire to address both immediate and future concerns is laudable.
dave ward says:
February 3, 2011 at 10:16 am
““Federal law prevents the city from dumping snow into the Charles River (too many contaminants)”
What!!! – Isn’t it going to end up there anyway when it melts? Does Federal law ban rain from falling in the river, or is that not contaminated?? Goodness knows what they would do if an engine-less Airbus dropped in…..”
I’m assuming that snow removed from roads with all the oil, chemicals and trash throw on them is contaminated to some extent. I’m not sure how big of a concern this would be though.
In 1957 I had a short term job with Exxon’s R&D group in New Jersey. Oil was so cheap and in surplus we had two projects to get rid of the surplus. We were trying to find ways to convert oil into food and we had a prototype truck that melted snow so the resulting water could be flushed down the sewers. Now, we try to make motor fuel from food and a politician reinvents our snow-melting truck. What goes around comes around.
“What!!! – Isn’t it going to end up there anyway when it melts?”
When snow melts, it goes into storm drains, which go to a treatment plant where much of the chemicals, oils, and doggie doo-doo are removed. The Charles river is damed at its mouth, so it’s a slow-draining pond near Boston. There are fisheries in the Charles, and we don’t want them killed off. Those of us who fish really do care about this – not just the green nutters.
@Larry Cullen in Texas
“Because of so-called “contaminants.”
So if I put those ‘so-called contaminants’ in your drinking water, you won’t mind? Let’s see… dog feces and urine, automotive coolant and oil, any random drippings from tanker trucks, and the random garbage that collects on our streets. You’re cool with drinking that soup?
For some reason, Chicago doesn’t abide by Federal law and dumps snow into the Chicago river anyway.
Clearly we need to compress all the piles of snow into blocks of ice and transport them to the Himalayas to restore the glaciers there. /sarc
Hm, reminds me of a vid of a ’60s (?) UK snow-clearing tool used by the railroads (?): a heavy-duty engine with two jet engines facing forward. Worked fine.